Practical experiences involving nature led to the realization of
differences: colors that change with seasons, flora and fauna in
their variety, variations in sky and weather. Human need is
externalized through hunting (maybe scavenging), fishing, finding
shelter, and seeking one's own kind, either under sexual drive
or for some collaborative effort. Thus, multiplicity of nature
is met by multiplicity of elementary operations. What resulted
was a language of actions, with elements relevant to the task at
hand. There was no real dialogue. In nature, screeches and
hoots, in finite sequences, signal danger. Otherwise, nature
does not understand human signs, images, or sounds. For
attracting and catching prey, or for avoiding danger, sounds,
colors, and shapes can be involved. What qualifies them as signs
is the infinity of variations and combinations required by the
practical context. Against the background of differences, human
practical experiences resulted also in the realization of
similarities in appearance and actions. Awareness of
similarities was embodied in means of interaction. They became
signs once the experience stabilized in the constitution of a
group coherently integrating the sign in its activity.
Elementary forms of praxis maintained individuals near the
object upon which they acted, or upon which needs and plans for
their fulfillment were projected. Extraction of what was common
to many tasks at hand translated into accumulation of
experience. With experience, a certain distance between the
individual, or group, and the task was introduced. The language
of actions changed continuously. Evaluation started as a
comparison. It evolved into inclinations, repetitive patterns,
and selections until it translated into a rule to be followed.
Interpretation of natural patterns connected to weather (what we
call change of season, storm, drought, etc.), to observations
concerning hunted animals, or digging for tubers, or to
agriculture (as we define it in retrospect) resulted in the
constitution of a repertory of observed characteristics and,
over time, in a method of observation. Once observed, phenomena
were tested for relevancy and thus became signs. They integrated
the observer, who memorized and associated them with successful
patterns of action. In a way, this meant that reading- i.e.,
observation of all kinds of patterns and associations to tasks at
hand-was in anticipation of notation and writing, and probably
one of the major reasons for their progressive appearance. This
reading filtered the relevant, that characteristic-of an
animal, plant, weather pattern-which affected the attainment of
desired goals. Consequently, the language of actions gained in
coherence, progressively involving more signs. Rituals are a
form of sharing and collective memory, a sui generis calendar,
characteristic of an implicit sense of time. They are a training
device in both understanding the signs pertaining to work and
the strategy of action to follow when circumstances changed. In
rituals, the unity between what is natural and what is human is
continuously reaffirmed.
Tools are extensions of the physical reality of the human being.
They are relevant as means for reaching a goal. Signs, however,
are means of self-reflection, and thus by their nature means of
communication. Tools, which can be interpreted as signs, too,
are also an expression of the self-reflective nature of humans,
but in a different way. What defines them is the function, not
the meaning they might conjure in a communicational context. By
their nature, tools require integration. In retrospect, tools
appear to us as instances of self-constitution at a scale
different from the natural scale of the physical world in which
individuals created them. The difference is reflected in their
efficiency in the first place, but also in the implicit
correlations they embody. Some are tools for individual use;
others require cooperation with other persons.
Sign activity at such primitive stages of humankind marked the
transcendence from accidental to systematic. The use of tools
and the relative uniform structure of the tasks performed
contributed to a sense of method. Tools testify to the close and
homogenous character of the pragmatic framework of primitive
humans. The syncretic nature of the signs of practical
experiences were reflected in the syncretism of tools and
signs. What we today call religion, art, science, philosophy, and
ethics were represented, in nuce, in the sign in an
undifferentiated, syncretic manner. Observations of repetitive
patterns and awareness of possible deviations blended.
Externalized in these complex signs, individuals strove towards
making them understandable, unequivocal, and easy to preserve
over time.
Think about such categories as syncretism, understanding,
repetitive patterns in practical terms. A sign can be a beat. It
should be easily perceived even under adverse conditions (noise
from thunder, the howl of animals). Humans should be able to
associate it with the same consequences (Run! should not be
confused with Halt!; Throw! should not be confused with Don't
throw! or some other unrelated action). This univocal
association must be maintained over time. As practical
experiences diversified, so did the generation of signs. Rhythm,
color, shape, body expression and movement, as experienced in
daily life, were integrated in rituals. Things were shown as they
are- animal heads, antlers and claws, tree branches and trunks,
huge rocks split apart. Their transformation was performed
through the use of fire, water, and stones shaped to cut, or to
help in shaping other stones.
It is quite difficult for us today to understand that for the
primitive mind, likeness produced and explained likeness, that
there was no connotation, that everything had immediate
practical implications. What was shared, here and now, or between
one short-lived generation and the next, was an experience so
undifferentiated that sometimes even the distinction between
action and object of action (such as hunting and prey, plowing
and soil, collecting and the collected fruit, etc.) was difficult
to make.
The process of becoming a human being is one of constituting its
own nature. Externalizing characteristics (predominantly
biological, but progressively also spiritual) to be shared
within the emergent human culture is part of the process We have
come to understand that there is no such thing as the world on
one side and a subject reflecting it on another. The appearance,
which Descartes turned into the premise of the rational
discourse adopted by Western civilization, makes us fall captive
to representational explanations rather than to ontogenetic
descriptions. Human beings identify themselves, and thus the
species they belong to, by accounting for similarities and
distinctions. These pertain to their existence, and sharing in
the awareness of these similarities and distinctions is part of
human interaction. As such, the world is constituted almost at
the same time as it is discovered. This contradictory dynamics of
identity and distinction makes it possible to see how language
is something other than the "image of our thoughts," as Lamy
once put it, obviously in the tradition of Descartes. Language
is also something other than the act of using it. We make our
language the way we continuously make ourselves. This making does
not come about in a vacuum, but in the pragmatic framework of
our interdependencies. The transition from directness and
immediateness to indirectness and mediation, along with the
notions of space and time appropriated in the process, is in many
ways reflected in the process of language constitution. The
emergence of signs, their functioning, the constitution of
language, and the emergence of writing seem to point to both the
self- definition and preservation of human nature, as these
unfold in the practical act of the species' self-constitution.